Never in the history of man has technology progressed at such an alarming rate of speed. From smartphones and gadgets to 1,000-plus-horsepower fully electric vehicles, to advanced artificial intelligence, tech development is an absolute juggernaut and has an effect on virtually everything around us. And while many shy away from the thought of changing something they’ve become accustomed to over the years, some things simply can’t be avoided.
With that said, it should really be no surprise to find that dealerships in Europe selling Porsche, Mercedes, and others, have been quietly rolling out digital window stickers for a few years now, and, having proven itself, the new-age system will make its way to the U.S., as well. This, in place of the traditional printed window stickers that have accompanied vehicles for decades, as a result of the efforts of Oklahoma Senator Monroney, who recognized a need for consumer protection and sponsored the Automobile Information Dislosure Act in 1958. Named after him, the Monroney label provides pertinent information regarding a vehicle’s costs, associated fees, warranty details, and more.
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The Good
There are multiple companies that offer digital price tags for a variety of business types, as companies have quickly realized the benefits of employing a digital pricing system for a number of reasons. Those include things like ease of quick price changes due to sales or inflation, central price control, real-time monitoring of inventory, the ability to schedule updates, and more.
For dealerships, creating a digital ecosystem that tracks their inventory automatically is a huge benefit. Rather than waiting for a chain of dealers to deliver inventory, sales, and trending reports, the digital system can relay it all at any time. This saves man hours, potential mistakes, and any sort of holiday or off-day delays from delivering information. Those are some of the benefits that DiCoSo, or Digital Communication Solutions of Germany, believes it’s bringing to the market and who have spent the last six years expanding their digital pricing program throughout Europe at 240 different dealerships. Now, the firm is headed to the U.S., starting with a Subaru dealership in Utah, and with their sights set on having 10-15,000 of their digital price tags in use within their first year of North American expansion.
Related What is the worst car dealer scam you felt the victim of?
Car salespeople commonly use tactics to influence car buyers. The “scarcity” approach is a common tactic that I encountered a few years ago when my wife and I purchased a new Honda HR-V. The salesperson emphasized the high demand of the model we wanted, and stressed how it wouldn’t be available for very long. After a long day of standing our ground, we managed to get the model and trim we wanted at a reduced rate below sticker that required lots of haggling. There are various tactics that salespeople employ to make as many sales as they’re pressured to, including bait and switch, title washing, and odometer fraud. What’s the worst scam you ever felt the victim of, and what happened?
The Bad
Digital price tags have already started popping up in the U.S. at Walmart locations in Texas, California, and others. The reasons described above play out perfectly for a massive retailer like Walmart with hundreds of thousands of pieces of inventory. Like car dealerships, price changes can be made in seconds and a project that would usually take days to complete manually, can be done through an app by a single person in just a few hours. That means time and money saved for business, but fewer jobs needed.
Any time a digital advancement is made, there’s going to be a healthy number of individuals looking for ways to override and take control of it. Hacking is a threat to any business these days, but especially one with forward-facing pricing that, if manipulated to show a lower price, could cause a major headache for both the business and the consumer once the actual price is revealed.
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The Potentially Ugly
The lightning quick changes can also be used to manipulate pricing the opposite way, which is something most people are thinking whenever pricing and dealerships are mentioned. A dealer with the ability to make a split-second price change when a potential buyer walks onto the lot is cause for alarm and could serve as an added weapon to an unsavory sales person’s tactics.
Dynamic pricing, in which a company adjusts its pricing based on supply and demand, is something many businesses employ, including rideshare apps like Uber, who’ve been the focus of complaints about price hikes on multiple occasions. And, if you’ve ever booked a flight, then you know that sooner is better as the longer you wait, the more likely you are to pay extra, with the price adjustment almost constant leading up to departure. That’s dynamic pricing in a nutshell. The automotive buyer/dealer relationship has been rocky for decades and supplying dealers with a tool to make quick, untraceable changes might make that marriage even more tense.
Regardless of how you feel about the programmable, digital display tags taking over the industry standard Monroney window stickers, there’s no doubt they’re coming. With DiCoSo already getting its feet wet in Europe and their upcoming U.S. roll out that includes a goal of 50,000 units over the next few years, car buyers can expect the modern pricing and info system to arrive at their local dealer at some point in the near future.